


Tailfeather

by quixoticquest



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anxiety, Attempt at Humor, Character Study, Crisis of Faith, Fluff, Friendship, Fun, Gen, High School, Judaism, Religious Conflict, Sexual Humor, Tattoos, this is like that one time in The Office
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 12:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20639285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticquest/pseuds/quixoticquest
Summary: “Ho boy!” Richie exclaims, slapping his hands on his knees. “You are serious about this popcorn, Stanley Manley! Let’s sweeten the pot a little - double it. What if we get you to sixty?”Now, Stanley is certain that he will, at best, be taking a couple trips to the laundromat in a few days’ time, and at worst, clearing his schedule to do his friends’ homework. Basically everything is going his way, for once, even if Dumb and Dumber are getting their chucks off harassing him.So there’s a chance there isn’t a single cautious thought in his head - for once - when he declares, “Richie, if you guys get me to sixty orders of popcorn, I will get the design of your choice tattooed right on my ass.”





	Tailfeather

Richie is fast, but Stan is faster, wrenching his arms away the moment pale knobby hands grabbed at the plastic tub cradled against his chest. He’s learned he needs quick reflexes when it comes to Richie’s impulses.

Richie makes a face. “You can’t just taunt me like that, all I had to eat today was a fucking Slim Jim!”

“You didn’t have breakfast?” Ben asks, blissfully ignorant to the fact that the Slim Jim probably  _ was _ breakfast.

“Breakfast is for wimps and hobbits,” Richie answers grumpily, settling back into the bean bag chair crammed into the corner where the coffee table meets the wall. The Urises’ newly finished basement rec room was nice and all, with matte beige paint and a white carpet just begging to turn dingy with enough foot traffic, but not quite big enough for furniture, a television set, foosball table,  _ and  _ seven long-limbed teenagers.

“Can I have s-suh-some?” Bill prods, channeling Oliver Twist without even trying as leans in for a handful from the couch. As if Stanley could ever deny Bill Denbrough anything, ever - but he must wait.

“Just gimme a sec.” Stanley had made sure to have his moment and stand front and center before the TV came on, lest he get booed out of the room, and now with all eyes on him, and no errant hands in his way, he was ready to give his pitch.

“My synagogue is doing a fundraiser for renovations,” he explains, twisting the wide lid off the cylindrical tub in his arm. The sweet, nutty flavor of the kettle corn reaches his nose, and just to spite Richie sitting to his right, he passes it to Ben on his left, to make its way around the room. He intends to butter them up, nice and easy.

“We’re selling popcorn, see? It’s three dollars a tub, and if you get three tubs it’s seven dollars total. Compared to-”

“Yuck, I hate kettle corn.” Eddie curls his lip and passes the tub along to Bill, who gratefully takes a handful.

Stan huffs through his nose, but he’s determined to stay patient. It won’t do any good to get exasperated during a sales pitch, even though he can feel his voice already getting crinkly, the way it does when he’s talked for longer than usual. “There’s other flavors, too. Caramel, cookies and cream, cheddar, butter,” he counts off on his fingers, “and plain, too. I know it’s kosher ‘cause my dad wouldn’t have done it otherwise and I’m pretty sure there’s some that don’t have those preservatives that you say upset your stomach.”

Eddie makes a noise that doesn’t really qualify as assent or dissent. By now the soft murmur of five munching mouths has permeated the basement, and no one has spit into their hands in disgust. With no one to interrupt him now, Stan forges on.

“That being said, we’re doing the fundraiser until the end of the month and orders should come in by the sixteenth of next month, and I would really really appreciate it if you guys got some popcorn.” 

Stan reaches into his back pocket and displays the order form envelope that had been folded into thirds to fit. So far the only names on the list are his own, with an order of plain, and his nana’s who had been coerced mostly by his mother.

There’s a heartbeat of silence that lasts for hours and hours in the quiet of Stan’s own mind. Now  _ he _ feels like Oliver Twist.

“Aren’t you a little old to sell Girl Scout cookies?” Richie quips, looking up over his glasses. Stan failed to realize that if the popcorn tub was passed to Richie last, he would just keep it. He’s balancing the tub between his thighs, knees bent up skyward on both sides. He might as well be daring Stanley to reach that close to his crotch if he wants the stupid thing back.

“I think it’s a nice thing to do,” Beverly counters before Stanley can get caught up explaining that he isn’t a Girl Scout. “Making time to help your dad like that.”

Stanley smiles thinly, and doesn’t mention that he never even considered there was an option  _ not _ to. Not when his dad is making projections of twenty-plus orders to his eighteen-year-old son who is drowning in college applications.

“I’ll buy some,” Mike proclaims like the godsend he is. “Can you put me down for a tub of the one you just sent around?”

“Kettle corn,” Stan clarifies, grabbing the pen he stuck behind his ear. Then, trying not to sound too eager, “Just one?”

“Yeah, that’s plenty.”

“M-m-me too, put me down,” Bill adds, scooching to dig his wallet out of his pocket. “But I don’t w-wuh-wuh-want the kettle corn, give me the - oh.” 

Moths might as well have fluttered from his wallet, because it was empty, save a crumpled movie ticket from  _ Billy Madison _ . Bill glanced up, trying not to look guilty. Stan hoped he fared a little better trying not to look disappointed.

“That’s okay,” he says, shaking his head. “Like I said, ‘til the end of the month. Does anyone else want to…?”

What follows is a resounding silence, awkward glances traded between the rest of the losers. Stan feels his shoulders fall in increments.

“Sorry, Stanley, we’re all kind of broke right now,” Beverly admits, shrugging. 

“Ben, don’t you work at the grocery store?” Stan asks, trying not to sound like he’s begging.

Ben tries to turtle into his shirt. “Don’t look at me, I’m saving for college. Richie still gets an allowance.”

“Wow, Haystack, _Et tu brute_ to you too!” Richie flicks his hand under his chin at Ben, which probably means he’s seen some mafia movie recently. That doesn’t stop Stanley from pinning him with a look though, until Richie has ceased dramatics long enough to face him.

“Listen, when you have sex as much as I do, you wind up paying out the wazoo for things like condoms, lube, anal beads, STD testing-”

“Alright, I get it.” Stanley takes another even breath before deciding maybe Richie isn’t the person to go to when money is involved. “It’s fine. There’s plenty of time if you guys want to order some. You know where to find me, okay?”

No one really answers okay back apart from some grumbling, but it’s all Stanley can get, so he moves back to his seat so they can catch  _ Fresh Prince _ before Eddie’s curfew. When he remembers to hold his hand out for the tub of popcorn from Richie, it comes back empty but for a few crumbs.

It’s looking up the next morning when Bill hands him three dollars in homeroom (one being quarters, dimes, and pennies in change), but for a promising start to the day, it’s a drag of a week that follows. Stanley can only bring himself to ask so many times before Saturday rolls around, and he’s at least got Ben down at that point for caramel. 

The next two weeks are even worse, but it’s not like Stanley isn’t exploring other options. Going door to door only reminds him that he’s not a prepubescent scamp with pinchable cheeks who can manipulate weak-willed grown-ups into forking over their cash for some snack food. In fact he’s got all the mediocrity of an adult with none of the authority, so most of these ventures conclude with a “No thanks” that rings in Stan’s ears as the door slams in his face.

The month ends on a Thursday, leaving him bent over his desk the Saturday afternoon prior staring at the eight pitiful names on his order form while he drums his pen furiously. One name is his, and he’s scribbled out the number one in the quantity box to write four instead - only because he isn’t desperate enough yet to justify paying more than eight dollars for novelty popcorn. He has five days to reach that point.

Part of him thinks it’s not that big a deal, that thirteen out of twenty projected orders isn’t that bad. It’s a majority. But the nauseous clench in his gut knows his dad isn’t going to see it that way.

_ They’re teenagers _ , Stan thinks, pinching the bridge of his nose as he harkens back to the losers. They can clear out any one of their kitchen pantries any day of the week. They are ravenous. There must be  _ some _ way to convince them to put their money toward novelty junk food. 

The sun is going down at this point, and Stanley hasn’t even started his homework. The Saturday service that morning extended well past noon, helping his dad tidy up and so on and so forth. He casts an accusatory glare toward the neat stack of color-coded folders and notebooks on the corner of his desk. Math is red, science is green, English is yellow, and history is blue -  _ obviously _ .

His business and finance folder lies on top, which is purple, which he isn’t really sure correlates but it’s senior year so it doesn’t matter. He thinks of the assignment sheets inside and how tedious it will be to work on that when he has so many other things to worry about. He understands the lesson, probably better than most of his classmates; he knows what an incentive is, and how to incentivize. It’s a simple enough concept - that’s why they’re teaching it in high school. He doesn’t need to prove it with a bunch of different written scenarios. 

Stan’s eyes flash. It’s like a lightbulb goes off in his head. One so bright it explodes and shatters into a million pieces. He feels like the smartest man in the world.

He doesn’t even feel like a nag when they’re in Richie’s backyard the next day, and he asks, “Anyone wanna buy popcorn? You’ve got a few days left.”

At this point they are definitely tired of hearing about the popcorn fundraiser, and though no one says anything beyond the familiar mumble, the consensus is an overwhelming  _ no _ . Richie, well attuned to the mood, blows out a forlorn tune on a plastic slide whistle. Where the fuck he got that thing and why it’s necessary right this minute is of no importance to Stanley.

“What if there was something in it for you?” Stan adds casually, examining his nails like he isn’t at all waiting with bated breath. 

Beverly snorts. “You mean like, popcorn?”

“I was thinking more like,” Stanley answers, drawing it out - like he hasn’t had this planned since the day before, like he hasn’t been thinking about it nonstop, “maybe if you guys got me six more orders, I’d treat you to the next movie we see.”

Six pairs of eyes which had previously avoided Stan every time he brought up his stupid popcorn were suddenly pinned to him. Not quite swimming with interest, but enough to have him suppressing a smug smile. Richie slides up curiously.

“Isn’t that...bribery?” Eddie’s eyes narrow.

Stan rolls his eyes. “It hardly qualifies. I’m not asking you to dig into your pockets either, maybe just ask your parents. But as long as your last name is on the order I’ll qualify it.”

At this point Stanley glaces pointedly at Richie, just to make it perfectly clear: “If you don’t contribute anything you can buy your own movie ticket.”

“Three dollar popcorn for a five dollar movie ticket, whoop dee fucking doo.” Richie scoffs and shoves his glasses up his face. “I can get popcorn at the theater!”

“That’s not the end of it though,” Stanley counters, taking his opportunity. “If you guys get me to  _ ten  _ orders, I’ll do your math homework for a week.”

Not even a second later Stanley was accosted by the dismayed exclamations of six friends who had been needling, asking, insinuating, and begging that he do their math homework for the better part of five years. 

“Stan, that’s  _ insane _ ,” Bill says, looking only slightly reluctant to take the offer.

Stan shrugs fluidly and doesn’t mention how easy it will be. It’s just a matter of copying over and over homework he probably already had a year or two prior, now that he’s in the highest honors course Derry offers. Stan has already worked out the details.

“Maybe I can get Margaret and Wentworth to contribute,” Richie says under his breath, glancing back toward the house.

“What about your allowance?” Eddie asks. 

Richie stares at the slide whistle in his hands.

“Wait wait wait,” Beverly cuts in, while Stan tries not to puff up like a proud peacock. “Ten? That’s so easy. That’s only thirty dollars between the six of us and our parents.”

“Well remember, if you get three it’s seven instead of nine.”

“Too easy!” Beverly crosses her arms. “What if we got you to fifteen orders?”

Stanley blinks in shock. Fifteen would put him well over his dad’s projection! There’s a light, expanding feeling in his chest. Is it glee? He can’t tell. 

“You know what? If you got me to fifteen orders I’d do your laundry for a week, too.”

It feels a little crazy when the incentive leaves his mouth in an eager rush, but after some private deliberation he knows it won’t be that hard. All he needs is a handful of quarters. Can’t disrupt his mom’s routine at home but he can certainly commandeer a washer and dryer at the laundromat after school a few days.

At this point the backyard is abuzz with excitement, and for maybe the first time ever, Stanley might have been contributing the majority. If he should be wary of how fast his friends jump to thrust manual labor upon him, it’s the furthest thing from his mind.

“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait,” Eddie rushes out, so fast some of the consonants muddle and disappear. The losers hush for as long as it takes him to count in midair, brow furrowed before his eyes flash. “If each of us got like, five orders that would only be nine dollars each. That’s nothing!”

“Why can’t you do math like this in class?” Ben utters incredulously, but Eddie ignores him.

“What if we give you thirty orders, Stanley? What then?”

There’s a teasing edge in Eddie’s voice that makes Stan think that at this point, he’s being fucked with. He can’t imagine what his friends would each individually do with five large tubs of popcorn. You get tired of that stuff real fast; Stanley can vouch from the samples.

For the sake of an answer, though, he humors Eddie. “Get me to thirty, and I’ll run around the track in my underwear.”

“Ho boy!” Richie exclaims, slapping his hands on his knees. “You are  _ serious _ about this popcorn, Stanley Manley! Let’s sweeten the pot a little - double it. What if we get you to  _ sixty _ ?”

Now, Stanley is certain that he will, at best, be taking a couple trips to the laundromat in a few days’ time, and at worst, clearing his schedule to do his friends’ homework. Basically everything is going his way, for once, even if Dumb and Dumber are getting their chucks off harassing him. 

So there’s a chance there isn’t a single cautious thought in his head - for once - when he declares, “Richie, if you guys get me to sixty orders of popcorn, I will get the design of your choice tattooed right on my ass.”

Apparently the dripping sarcasm in his voice doesn’t register, because there is a collective shout like nothing Stanley has ever heard from civilized human beings, not even teenagers. It’s dismay and awe and enthusiasm and in a matter of seconds the losers are on their feet in a chaotic flurry, digging into their pockets.

“Quick, what’s sixty divided by three?!”

“Oh shit, I only have five bucks.”

“You get butter, I’ll get kettle corn.”

“Mom! Dad! I need need to take out a loan!”

It goes on for long enough that Stanley remembers what dread feels like. Right before his eyes he watches his friends team up, counting crumpled bills and coins on the picnic table, Richie darting into his house. Even Bill and Mike are pooling change, doing mental math, and resolving to call their parents.

All in an effort for Stanley to blemish himself like an Etch A Sketch with a broken slider.

“Uh, guys,” he tries, his voice coming out kind of funny and pinched as the reality of his promise hits him square in the ribs, “sixty is a lot, you don’t have to-”

“You know what, maybe I’ll get plain.”

“Stan! Put me down for caramel - no wait, cookies and cream! Wait! What were the others?”

“Do you have catalogues or something we can look at?”

“This isn’t cumulative, y’know.” Stan raises his voice, parroting blurbs from his business textbook. But his friends are set to task. “If you hit a higher incentive threshold you don’t get the ones below it! It’s all tallied on Thursday no sooner or later!” 

He’s making rules up as he goes. If only last night he had prepared for ambitious friends, and his own stupid mouth. All Stanley can do now is hope they realize how the stakes, and what a stupid exchange it is. Surely his body is worth more than some tubs of popcorn.

Right?

The effort Stan witnesses over the next few days makes him think that if world leaders were this motivated, war would be over and poverty eradicated. By Tuesday alone they’re well over halfway there. Tozier, of all names, has the most orders beside it. Stan figures he can chalk that up to Richie’s parents’ eagerness for the cause, as well as their son’s sadism. Stanley collects cash and checks glumly, knowing the higher the number goes, the closer he gets to spelling his own doom.

“I have expanded my portfolio just for this occasion,” Richie explains Tuesday afternoon, plonking down next to Stanley with a notebook full of marker doodles. Crude, messy, vulgar marker doodles that make Stan go warm in the ears, cheeks, and throat.

“I know this one isn’t very creative or artistic or clever, but I think the arrow and the words ‘insert here’ are pretty self explanatory,” Richie says in regard to one particular page, before flipping on. The rest are a healthy range of scary and disgusting and Stanley expected no less.

One good thing he finds out that week is that the tattoo won’t get him banned from the Jewish cemetery when he dies. That’s a myth, he learns from his science teacher, who he knows is Jewish but has never seen at his dad’s Saturday services (which means the grapevine won’t bite him in the ass if he asks the question nonchalantly enough). That’s a relief, Stan thinks grimly, that his stupid decisions won’t hold any consequences after he’s dead. It still means he’s about to invest in dark underwear and long swim trunks on the off chance that the tattoo artist marks him too low down his thighs for comfort.

Cemetery or not, he knows there’s a pretty strict covenant (among so, so,  _ so _ many) that they’re not supposed to ink up. He reads the passage in Leviticus just to make sure, juice up his suffering, all that jazz. It’s not explicitly about tattoos but he knows the religious interpretation inside and out thanks to his dad, who would freak if he ever found out for sure. 

Why couldn’t Richie have been bluffing? He’s always bluffing! One time wouldn’t have been any fucking different.

_ So back out _ , Stan chides himself, like it’s obvious. But that makes his stomach sink worse. For one thing it’s too late. The thought of leading his friends on for days, only to say psych and back out when he’s taken all their cash, and their parents’. 

Stanley can’t lie to himself, anyway. He knows his real loyalties. He knows whose altar he’s kneeling at when push comes to shove. Whose covenant he’d loathe to break. Who he would hate more than anything to appear weak to. 

A coward. A liar. A pussy.

And it’s not his dad.

By three o’clock on Wednesday, the losers make sixty. It didn’t even take to Thursday. His fundraiser envelope is stuffed to bursting, the paper soft and worn from so much handling, and indented from the scratch of his pen.

“Pick a cheek, Stan. I’m thinking left buttock.” Richie lands a swipe to the back of his khakis on the way out of English, and if Stan weren’t despairing he probably would have returned the blow upside his head.

It’s a couple days of respite before they seek out a tattoo parlor. Thursday night Stan had handed the order form to his dad, who was all smiles and foreign affection, an  _ I’m so proud of you _ bound to have an expiration date. They agree upon Saturday, because that’s when they’re all free, and it’s the weekend. And, obviously, because they’re not about to let Stan weasel out with the hope that the passage of time and busy schedules will make them forget. That’s what he’s imagining anyway. Either way, he’s a man of his word.

He’s shitting and shaking in the passenger’s seat of the Denbrough family minivan come two in the afternoon, Bill on his left, personally delivering him into this disaster. They have to leave Derry proper to find a tattoo parlor, but Bangor isn’t that far, and they’re excited to make a day trip out of it.

Well, mostly everyone is.

“What did you decide on?” Beverly asks Richie, how ever the five of them are configured in the backseats.

“Ben and Eddie liked this one best.” There’s the sound of fluttering paper from Richie’s cluttered notebook, and a second later Beverly is snorting giggles uncontrollably.

“Oh, that’s  _ perfect _ !”

“Wanna see, Stanley?” Richie reaches between the front seats, waving the notebook and no doubt being a big fat distraction to Bill. Stan shoves his hand away, but not before he catches a glimpse of the thickly sketched shapes, what he can only begin to describe as  _ phallic _ .

“You okay?” Bill asks all of a sudden, sparing a glance from the road.

“I’m fine,” Stanley answers automatically.

“You sh-sh-shuh-sure?”

“Yes, of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re holding on p-pr-pretty tight to the oh shit handle.”

Stanley glances up at his waxy white knuckles gripped hard around the grab handle over the window, as if Bill were careening through the streets instead of patiently obeying the speed limit. He unlatches his fingers and rubs circulation back into his hand.

“Hey, Stan.” It’s Mike now, hands coming up across Stanley’s shoulders over the back of his seat. He flinches at the touch, just a little jumpy, given the circumstances.

“You don’t have to do this, man.” Mike’s voice is soft while Stan stares forward. Like he’s Orpheus and he’s not allowed to turn around and look. Except instead of getting out of the underworld, he’s being led into it.

“We all had a good laugh, nobody really expects you to go through with this. You’re obviously nervous, that’s the last thing we want. Why don’t you just go back to the movie treat or something and we’ll call it square.”

Despite the fact that this is exactly what he’d been hoping for, Stanley’s head is shaking before the word  _ no _ leaves his mouth. “That’s not fair. I promised, I’m gonna do it. It’s not a big deal, no one’s even gonna see it. Besides I’d hate for Richie to have wasted all his artistic prowess on me.” He rolls his eyes for no one in particular. Maybe the crossing guard out the window.

“You sure?”

“Positive. Sit back please, bad car safety _ really _ makes me nervous.”

Stan listens to Mike huff good-naturedly, and earns a pat on both shoulders for his mettle. There is a little bit of resolve that has built up, just from Bill’s and Mike’s concern. At least not everyone is hellbent on his humiliation. Stan breathes a little easier.

Until they park in front of Blind Faith Tattoo Studio. The logo is sprawling and gothic and each letter mocks him.

The parlor isn’t really fit to accommodate groups of seven, but they pile inside anyway, a bell tinkling overhead like it’s just your average mom and pop shop. It’s an immediate relief when the place appears more sanitary than the grungy nightmare Stan’s mind had been concocting. There’s two whole employees milling around. The one who looks up at their entrance is sporting a cardinal red pixie cut with free advertising all up and down her pale arms. She’d have been laughed out of Derry in seconds flat. Or maybe chased, with torches and pitchforks.

“Minors need parental permission,” she says automatically, leaning down on her elbows at the front desk.

“Good thing Stanley here brought his big boy pants, and his driver’s license!” Richie smacks him square between the shoulder blades, and Stan trips up to the desk unceremoniously. “Not that he’ll be wearing the pants for very long, he’s getting an ass tattoo.”

The artist’s dark lips curl like she smelled something foul. “Really?”

Stanley knows he’s not cutting the most imposing, intimidating appearance at the moment. He’d left his kippah in the car for a few different reasons, but that doesn’t mean it was the only thing keeping him from looking like an absolute goober in his plaid shirt and soft beige pants.

Still, he manages to keep his voice still, without betraying his nerves, when he says, “Yup.”

The artist stares at him for too many heartbeats to be comfortable. Her black-rimmed gaze is particularly paralyzing. Stan is really considering turning around and pushing past his friends to book it down the street, but then she says, “Okay,” and shrugs, sealing his fate.

“What were you thinking of getting?”

“They have it covered.” Stan jabs a thumb toward the snickering losers.

She checks his license and then the redheaded artist leads them to an empty chair, and adjusts it for the position that’s gonna be necessary for this job. There’s a whole array of tools and wires that look like they’re meant to be in a hospital on the other side of the stool she sits in, slapping on latex gloves. The heart palpitations are really going now, but Stanley swallows them down.

If he wonders for too long how many of the losers have seen his bare ass he’s bound to attempt escape, so before he can overthink it Stan unbuckles his belt and pushes his bottoms, briefs and all, down his thighs. The tails of his button up are just long enough to cover his dick, but that doesn’t stop him from cupping a hand over his junk while he’s not quite facing his friends.

“I see London, I see France,” Eddie exclaims, smothering his laughter behind his palms.

“Dude, I see the fuckin’ Grand Canyon,” Richie chortles, so beside himself that he has to lean between Eddie and Bill. Then, in a lilting Valley Girl voice, “ _ Oh my gawd, Becky, look at her butt _ .”

Stan is scowling when the tattoo artist turns back from her station. She pauses at the sight of him.

“You don’t have to drop your pants that far,” she says awkwardly.

Stanley hikes his khakis back up to the tune of each and every one of the losers howling with laughter. It leaves his face hot and red and his ears ringing as he goes to lay almost flat on the black chair. His pants are pulled up in the front and just enough to expose the bulb of his ass to the air conditioned tattoo parlor and whatever ministrations are to come.

He’s like a specimen waiting to be dissected, with his friends standing over him, vibrating with interest.

“Oh, here.” Richie passes the notebook over Stan’s head to the artist. On the way past, Eddie cranes his head and gasps.

“But that’s not-!”

“Sh!”

_ Oh great _ , Stan thinks mournfully, trying to think of what could possibly be worse than what he saw in the car. 

All of a sudden a cold sting afflicts his skin and he full-body flinches, teeth clenched at the realization that he’s been marred and now there is no going back ever not ever.

“That was alcohol on a cotton ball,” the tattoo artist mentions without amusement.

“Right, sorry,” Stan mumbles, keen to bury his face into the chair. He grips the underside until his fingers hurt and chill from lack of blood flow. “Sorry, I’ll be normal now, keep going.”

Beverly and Mike and Richie and Ben and Eddie and Bill are whispering to each other like curious scientists, words Stanley can’t really make out, especially not when the buzz of a needle fills his ears. The punk pixie tattoo artist confirms his go ahead enough times that Stan starts to get aggravated. 

The needle bites into his flesh and before he even knows what he’s feeling he yelps. 

_ “Holy cow!” _

“Really, that’s what you’re going with?” Richie groans.

“No no, are you kidding? That’s perfect,” Beverly gushes. 

Stanley buries his face in his hands. The prickly needle is a baby bee sting compared to the embarrassment suffusing his body. It’s happening. He’s tainted. All this for some stupid popcorn.

“Shit, I should have brought a camera,” Richie observes.

“Whoa,” Ben murmurs from above. “I didn’t realize there would be blood.”

“I think,” Eddie mutters, “I’m gonna throw up.” He pushes past the others and the bell clatters noisily on his way out the door. 

“Ha, wuss.” Richie’s voice is a little thin, and doesn’t quite reach the volume required to call after Eddie. “Can’t handle a little - oh, yikes.” There’s an aborted noise from the back of his throat and he turns tail.

The smug satisfaction that blooms in Stan’s mind might be what allows him to get through the rest of the ordeal. Really, it’s not that bad (though he would never admit). It’s an irritating pain in his ass (ha!) to say the least but he’s not shouting every other second. At some point Mike ruffles his hair, and Beverly squeezes his hand. He tries to figure out the shape of the pattern the artist is tracing on his butt, and fails. Well, at least he won’t have to look at it every day.

It’s not ideal, of course not. But it’s not the worst way to get a tattoo.

“You survived,” Eddie observes, shoving a chocolate cone under Stan’s nose with a tight and maybe slightly guilty expression knit across his face. 

“Nope.” Stan takes the ice cream without a thank you, thinking pleasantries like that are void in the face of the ordeal he just went through. Eddie and Richie are lapping at twin vanilla soft serves, and Mike pushes out of the parlor, having just come from tipping the tattoo artist. Bill and Ben split the fee into thirds with Stanley, against his protest.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little, but not as much as I thought it would.”

“Do you think those needles are sanitized.”

“Hopefully.”

“Do you want to see it?” Beverly asks Stan excitedly, as they start down the street, away from the tattoo parlor and the minivan for some excursion that isn’t quite as traumatizing.

Stanley frowns. “Not really.” He had almost forgotten that there was actually an image branded on his ass, and not just a sore sensation. An image straight from the mind of Richie Trashmouth Tozier. Not to mention, they were out in public.

“Oh c’mon, just real quick-” It takes seconds for the losers to huddle around him, as much protection from the confused gazes of potential onlookers and bystanders as interest in the Stanley’s new beauty mark. There’s nowhere for him to run, or hide.

“Whip it out, Uris,” Richie demands.

Sighing impatiently, Stan passes his melting cone to Bill so he can have both hands. Undoing his belt for the  _ second  _ time, he wriggles down his pants as far as he dares, until the sticky black plastic covering for the healing tattoo is exposed. It stands in stark comparison to his lily white ass.

Mentally preparing himself for whatever lies beneath, Stanley peels away the plastic - and gasps despite his best efforts.

“It came out great! It looks egg-cellent,” Richie giggles. “That tattoo artist was in beak performance.”

“Oh, boo, Richie.” Eddie sneers and most of them groan.

“What? That was good! Honestly, I quack myself up.”

Sure enough, there on the curve of Stanley’s butt, rendered in black lines and blue ink, is a pretty little bird with fluffy feathers, sweet in such a way that it must have been referenced from a Disney movie.

“It’s a bird,” Stan reports in awe, whipping his head up to glance around his grinning friends. His mouth is gaping, but the surprise is so astonishing - in the best way possible - that he feels his lips tilting up at the edges. “You guys, it’s a  _ bird _ .”

“What?” Beverly tilts her head at him with her brows quirked, still smiling. “You really thought we’d let you deface yourself for a couple crummy tubs of popcorn?”

Stan doesn’t realize his smile has spread until his cheeks are aching. Suddenly it’s not even about the bird. All the fear and dread he’d subjected himself to the last few days. As if his friends would ever follow through on something so harrowing.

Honestly, he should know better.

Mike clears his throat. Just in time, because Stanley is starting to get emotional. “Alright, we’re taking a little too long, you should pull your pants up.” 

They all laugh as Stanley replaces the plastic and buckles himself into place. They hem and haw at him a little more and ask questions but eventually he’s allowed to lapse into a comfortable silence, watching the others jabber on excitedly, content to eat his ice cream. 

The relief is palpable, and there’s something more than that, that he can’t quite place. He put one thing in his life over another this week, he remembers, without expecting this particular outcome. A kind of happy ending he isn’t used to. Something profound about it tugs at the back of Stan’s mind, but Bill is compelling his attention with an anecdote a moment later and he forgets to dwell on it.

Something about faith, but he doesn’t know much about that except it feels so much better here than in a big stone temple.

It feels especially better when he drops an enormous cardboard box off on Richie’s porch two weeks later.

“What the fuck is this?” Richie grunts, rubbing his eyes from under his glasses so they shove into his unruly hair. It’s Sunday, so he’s probably been asleep since before the doorbell rang minutes ago, but Stan has been up since seven that morning helping control the big ass shipment from the fundraiser company that arrived at the synagogue on Friday.

“Don’t act like you’d forget about twelve tubs of popcorn, Richie,” Stan tuts in a put upon manner, watching realization flash across the trashmouth’s face. “My dad says thanks by the way, it’s all ‘cause of you and your family we get to give the building a long overdue paint job.”

“Fuck, what am I supposed to do with all this?” Richie flounders, still visibly groggy, and tries to get his arms around the huge box. It’s not quite as heavy as it looks, but an absolute drag to pick up off the ground. Stan knows from experience. “Stan! Help me out!”

“Sorry, I’m on a tight schedule, don’t you know I have forty-eight other boxes to deliver today? It’s a little inconvenient that you couldn’t just pick it up after temple yesterday but really we’re just  _ so _ grateful when goyim lend a hand that we don’t mind delivering.”

“Goy-what? Stanley, come on!”

“Seeya.” Stan waves and starts down the walkway, Richie’s frustration growing in volume behind him. From the Tozier’s lawn he can see the other boxes crammed into the backseat of his car, that he had to open the windows on for the corners to fit. He has to crawl down the suburban streets since he can’t see out his rearview, and he can’t put his head back too far with a wall of cardboard pressing into his hair.

But it’s not too bad. Just the thought of the looks on his dear losers’ faces and the memory of Richie’s dismay is enough to have Stanley smiling and whistling and pushing boxes back into the passenger seat with a pep in his step. 

He should have brought a camera.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back baby! Just as I suspected IT Chapter Two reinvigorated me and here I am with my first IT fic in ages. It's not what I expected for my return to the fandom but it was an idea I just had to get out of my system. This is based on Season 8 Episode 2 of The Office by the way, so definitely check that out if you haven't seen it.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, and hopefully I'll have some proper ship fic soon and maybe some additions to hiatus works. Thanks so much for checking this out!


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